Last week, an International District shop owner was fined $250 and ordered to do 50 hours of community service for selling pens. But Thanh Nguyen's pens weren't ordinary--they were crack pipes in disguise, and the Seattle Police Department has been working to get them off of store shelves.
On December 4, 2001, Nguyen was working at his store, T.Q. Smoke Shop, on Jackson Steet. An undercover Seattle police officer came in and asked for a glass pen. Nguyen sold him one, and was soon charged with delivery of drug paraphernalia.
According to Shelley Hickey, the West Precinct liaison in the city attorney's office, Nguyen's case is one of the first sentences to come out of her partnership with the police.
In the past few years, with assistance from the city attorney's office, SPD officers have visited almost two dozen mom-and-pop convenience stores in the downtown area to tell shop owners about crack paraphernalia--usually small glass pipes called roses, or the special pens Nguyen sold. The "friendly" visits were actually laying the groundwork for future busts--police need to prove the merchant knows what the pipes and pens are for, so cops can cite the owner for selling them later.
"The city is asking the court to place a heightened burden upon merchants such as Mr. Nguyen... and to in effect be an extension of the police's reach," Nguyen's attorney James Egan told the court.
Most merchants have complied with the police, but a few still sell the pens. The $4 pens, which have real ink, can be easily disassembled and used to smoke crack.
"It's designed to get around the drug paraphernalia law," Hickey says.
